Hippity Hoppity

Oh the number of times I have heard Here Comes Peter Cottontail the past few weeks from the two sweet little voices that fill my house. But as my short time as an oncology nurse taught me, I am so thankful that they are healthy and are able to sing at the top of their lungs - okay well not always in the moment but I am when I step back from the craziness of our day to day life. :)

As each holiday approaches, I always have these grand ideas of the fun activities for us to do as a family in preparing for the celebration like the Thanksgiving Tree that turns into Jesse Tree at Christmas (that did not get made in time for either holiday this year) or the little devotion cards that coincides with the Jesus Storybook Bible for Easter (that didn't get printed off because we were out of printer paper and I never remembered to get any before Easter).

So I decided I would have to let that go and would use what we already had ready to go at home and do things that are already part of our normal routine (and hopefully as our children continue to get older, I will have time to do those other activities). So we brought out the Resurrection Eggs that Chris' mom had gotten for us a few years ago. These have been so great - and I will say I even learned somethings reading the story that goes along with them. I would highly recommend them to anyone that does not have them. And the other thing we did to teach Maddie about why we celebrate Easter is we sang the Power of the Cross every night before she went to bed. I've include the lyrics below. Its one of my favorite songs!

The Power of the Cross
Oh, to see the dawn
Of the darkest day:
Christ on the road to Calvary.Tried by sinful men,
Torn and beaten, then
Nailed to a cross of wood.


CHORUS
This, the pow'r of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath—
We stand forgiven at the cross.

Oh, to see the pain
Written on Your face,
Bearing the awesome weight of sin.
Ev'ry bitter thought,
Ev'ry evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow.

Now the daylight flees;
Now the ground beneath
Quakes as its Maker bows His head.
Curtain torn in two,
Dead are raised to life;
"Finished!" the vict'ry cry.

Oh, to see my name
Written in the wounds,
For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death;
Life is mine to live,
Won through Your selfless love.

This, the pow'r of the cross:
Son of God—slain for us.
What a love! What a cost!
We stand forgiven at the cross.

We had a great Easter filled with sweet memories and Easter Egg Hunts! It started with Maddie's class Easter Party on Thursday, which was the party I had signed up to help with. I said I would do the sweet, so of course I started searching Pintrest for a cute idea. Here are the bunny cupcakes:

Not quite as cute as the ones on pintrest, but cute enough!

Their tables with the crafts ready to go...

  

Her class before the Egg Hunt. 

  

 The Egg Relay

Maddie with her friend Caroline. They have been inseparable for the past two years; I don't know what they are going to do without each other next year!

Friday morning we had Emalyn's playgroup Easter Egg Hunt.

And that afternoon after naps, they had a neighborhood Easter Egg hunt on the street behind us. 

Not the cutest picture of Maddie, but sadly the best of the 3 I took. This is her with Margaret Moore who lives the street behind us. They have two little girls the same age as ours and are about to move. We are going to miss having them right behind us!

Emalyn picked up one egg, opened it, saw that there was candy, and spent the rest of the time unwrapping her chocolate egg!

Saturday we had an Egg Hunt at Mimi's and GrandD's

Daddy lifted her up to reach on in the tree!

By this egg hunt, she had gotten the hang of it!

All 7 grandchildren!

 Out of the blue last week, Emalyn said "I miss my mae-mae." And we turned around taking the picture of the whole crew and Emalyn was just loving on Macie. She holds a special place in both of my girls hearts.

Easter morning, trying out their new backpacks from their Easter Baskets! 

After church, we went to my Aunt and Uncles house for lunch and egg hunt for the little ones. 

Miss Caroline!

My girls and my cousins' little girls waiting for the egg hunt to begin.

 Finally a family picture on Easter!

Then it was home for naps, and to Lee Anne's Easter night for dinner. 

Sadly I erased all the rest of the pictures from that night.,.., on accident! But they had so much fun having an Easter Egg hunt just for the two of them!

The Beach

Oh yes, it is definitely March and I just now posting about our trip in September. But I am determined to get caught back up this week. So here it goes...

We started our 10 day adventure at the beach with the three other couples we were good friends with in Atlanta. Oh yes, we definitely had 14 of us in my mom's 3 bedroom beach condo! And of the 6 little girls, five of them were under 2!! We had so much fun though, and over all it went really really well.

Here are the girls walking to the pool

As you can imagine, Maddie loved being the oldest!

 Poor Mary Frances didn't know what she was in for sitting next to my girls

 But she didn't want to stick around for long for anymore "loving"

Girls Night

The moms went out to dinner the first night we were there. 

Fun on the beach

Sweet Maddie was worn out and fell asleep before dinner at Red Bar.

Maddie was so excited to get to hold baby Anna Caroline Donald.

Had to get a few pictures of them on the beach. 

Emalyn was less than pleased that I was trying to take pictures of her - so this is the best one I got of her. 

All the girls

Mary Stewart Donald, Charlotte Sutherland, Mary Frances Cahill, Emalyn, Maddie, & Anna Caroline Donald

 
Maddie saying bye to Charlotte; they had so much fun running around together.

And we were off to Disneyworld! That post to come tomorrow (hopefully)!

Hunkering down in the basement

So Nashville was a 10/10 today on the Torcon tornado scale. Chris came home from work. Bebe left work and joined us in the basement. Emalyn kept saying all done now? So far we are safe just hail

One of Those Days

Yesterday was just one of those days around here. My alarm went off at 5:30, and I hit snooze because we had just been up with Maddie at 4:30. The sad thing is I do even remember now what in the world she thought she needed at 4:30 in the morning! But none the less, I thought my list of things to get done before the girls got up would have to wait for 10 more minutes. But apparently instead of hitting snooze I turned the alarm off,  because the next thing I heard was Maddie not so quietly shutting the door to her room (one of those things with an old house).  I asked her what she was doing downstairs (still thinking it was 5:30). Her reply - but mommy my clock says its time to get up. My eyes quickly dart back to my clock and see it is 7:04. Oh yes- 4 minutes after Chris was supposed to be in Franklin -which is of course 30 minutes away - to go on a work trip for the night. Chris jumped out of bed, flung his bag onto of the bed, and started throwing clothes in it for Chattanooga. I'm still sitting in bed thinking of everything that I need to have ready to go for me to walk out of the door in an hour and a half -  both of the girls dressed, bags packed, lunches packed, shower for staff meeting at church, pack a lunch for myself b/c I have to leave the staff meeting early to make it to a neurologist appointment. And actually think to myself, maybe I'll have about an hour after the doctor to run one or two errands before I pick the girls up. Ha!

I hear Emalyn start waking up, Chris grabs her as he walks back from the bathroom and hands her off to me. I immediately notice her eye is red. I had seen a little red dot in her eye yesterday when we were at the pediatricians office for an ear infection, but thought surely it was allergies. Oh but it was even redder this morning. So my mind starts racing, okay if I can get her to the early morning walk in hours at the doctor, maybe they will tell me it is just allergies and she can go to school as planned. But that means we have got to be walking out the door in 45 minutes - which would be a small miracle in and of itself! I grab two cereal bars for them to eat for breakfast, dart upstairs to grab Maddie's dress out of her closet, race back downstairs to start getting my clothes on, get Emalyn dressed, grab a sweater for Maddie, and remind her we are not going to wear her brown boots with her cute smocked spring dress. She gives me a look - I'm sure trying to decide if I really mean that. And thats when I notice her eye is red too! At this point I am pretty sure it is pink eye since they both have it, but I am still hoping for allergies and off to school.

Oh but the Lord had other plans for my day. He was so faithful and knew exactly what I needed even when I didn't know it - a day at home where I couldn't get one thing on my list done! Our past few weeks have been crammed full, that it was so nice to have a day at home where we could not go anywhere. Maddie and I played 2 board games together while Emalyn slept. The girls put on their bathing suits and played outside (what? yes it is still February - but after it has rained and I know they are going to get their clothes wet - I figure may as well having your bathing suit on!).  And we finished the night off by making a cake after dinner, and they got to decorate it with sprinkles - which was the highlight of their day.

As I am working on my third load of laundry for the second day in a row (oh yes all the sheets and anywhere that they laid their heads from the past two days needs to be washed), thinking back on yesterday it was a very sweet day with my girls. Not that we did not have our moments - and actually probably one of my worst moments as a mom in quite a while. What brought us crashing to that point? Eye drops. Cold, stinging eye drops. Three times a day, two drops in both eyes. And no daddy at home to help! I think what made it worse was that whichever one of them went second had to watch the other go through it and the fear built as she was waiting. The first time went okay - not easy, but that's when I'm glad I'm a nurse because it doesn't phase me to put them in my lap hold their little hands down with leg and pry their eye open. Not what I like to do - but it gets the job done when you have to. Or at least that's what I can do with Emalyn. Maddie, however, my 80% percentile 4 year old is mighty strong for her 47 pounds! And the second round of drops was horrible. Maddie was crying, I was crying, she was yelling, I was yelling, I threatened to take anything and everything I could think of to no avail! And thats the point when I remember one of the moms from our church saying when she had to raise her voice, she knew she had let it go too far. So off to her room - Still have not gotten the eye drop situation down pat but I will say last night and this morning were better.

I laughed last night when when a friend of mine texted me "what book did you read on discipline?" Because yesterday was humbling, it has been a long time since I felt that helpless and that one of my children were completely out of control. But it is always a good reminder of why I spend so much time working with them. And the best part is daddy comes home tonight! I think I'm more excited about that than the girls are!

Birthdays!

My sweet baby turned two! I can't believe it. I was already pregnant with Emalyn when Maddie turned two, and I thought she was so grown up, which is so funny because Emalyn still seems so little to me!

She has changed so much over this past year. She has definitely found her voice and is not scared to stand up for herself (and let the whole house know about it in the process)!  I have had so much fun getting to spend time with just her when Maddie is in school. I am amazed at things she knows that I have no idea she does. It hit me a few weeks ago as we were playing hide-and-go-seek with Maddie that she didn't know how to count. So I thought that would be a great opportunity to start working on it. And I said Em start counting with me, "One..." And then she took off all the way to 10! I was shocked. Sweet little thing doesn't get much of a chance to show me what she knows!

We started her birthday morning with Donut Den as has become the tradition. They love sitting up on the stools. 

 And then we had to run back home to get ready for school. Her birthday was on a Wednesday this year, which is the day she goes to school. And there is no other way she would rather spend her day. Every time I drop Maddie off, Emalyn will ask "play with Ann Byrn? (her teacher)" The first week back at school after Christmas she had a meltdown each time we dropped Maddie off , and she didn't get to stay as well.
We made monkey cookies for her class that day. 

Still working on perfecting the icing of sugar cookies, but I will say they turn out better each time I attempt!

Bebe came over after school to bring her a cupcake.

(And yes, all of my Christmas cards were still up. These January birthdays are so hard! I can't get fully regrouped from Christmas before its birthday time!)

She always licks the icing off first!

Mimi and Grand D came over after dinner to give her her presents. 

She loved it as you can tell...

After doing two separate parties last year and still being crammed into our house, we opted for Monkey's Treehouse this year for the party. 

Hard to tell from this picture, but it is her Happy Birthday Banner with monkeys w/ pink bows. :)

The Party Room

I found the cutest monkey printables from this shop on Etsy. She was great to work with me and put together a smaller package of just the things I wanted. 

And for party favors I found monkey stuffed animals on sale on Amazon and monogrammed a bag tag with each of the children's name on them. 

The birthday girl sliding down the slide (holding Bebe's hand of course!)

Inside the treehouse w/ Maddie and Macie!

Oh yes, that would be Neel's child mid-air! They had lots of fun in the ball pit. 

After some time of playing, it was time for snacks and cupcakes. 

 Tried to do things with a monkey theme: we had peanut butter & banana sandwiches in the shape of monkeys and monkey cheese cut-outs and banana cupcakes. 

 Let the snacks begin

Then it was time to sing to the birthday girl. We had just sung to her 4 days earlier but I guess with all of the people, she got scared. She starts off with her hand covering her mouth (like mom I cannot believe you just put a "no touchy" in front of me) and by the end her head is buried into my chest.  

 Thank goodness for big sisters to blow out the candles for you! 

But a banana cupcake makes it all better! :)

January is a month full of birthdays.  We celebrated 7 birthdays on Chris' side of the family, including my sweet husband's 30th! My plan was to surprise him with a weekend away (yea right! I kept it a secret for all of 2 days before I spilled the beans). But we went to the Grove Park Inn for a weekend, and it was wonderful! We dropped the girls off with the Hills (or Honey and D-Doc as my girls call them) in Knoxville on our way up. Its amazing how refreshed you can come back from a weekend!